


let you down easy

by KaiFukugawa



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drift Side Effects, Ghost Drifting, M/M, Melancholy, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Happy, POV Hermann Gottlieb, Spoilers, newt gets old yeller'ed, no happy ending, precursor!newt, star-crossed lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 12:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14402514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaiFukugawa/pseuds/KaiFukugawa
Summary: "No," Hermann says, shocking the room into silence. His voice is stronger than he feels. "It has to be me."





	let you down easy

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for this y'all one day I'll write something that isn't just angst. I wrote this really quickly so it's,,,,not the best but damn I had some shit i needed to get off my chest.  
> Anyway I was listening to Black and Blue by Chris Garneau while writing this so listen to that if you want to make yourself sad

It's been six months since the world almost ended again, and Newt hasn't improved.

Ranger Pentecost passes on any new data on his condition to Hermann, but there are only so many times they can go over the same brain scans. Eventually, Pentecost begins to show up for lunch with no news, just the quiet melancholy of a man mourning. Hermann doesn’t begrudge him the small comfort, no matter how much he wishes to protest; he is not a man in mourning. Not yet.

And still, with each day that passes, the hope he’s kept kindled in his chest begins to dim. He glances over the newest brain scans again. There have been no changes; he stares at the lines separating the low, wobbling line of Newton’s consciousness from the Precursors’ and begs the universe for answers.

Politics and poetry and promises. These are lies.

There is no truth anymore. Not without him.

It has been six months of gathering information from the thing wearing Newton’s skin. Six months of interrogations that end with the Precursors’ puppet bloody and bruised, spitting manic promises of destruction with kaiju blue eyes.

It is on the anniversary of the sixth month that Hermann is shown the newest brain scan.

The line of Newton’s consciousness, the only thin thread holding him to this world, is flat lined at zero, crushed beneath the spiking grip of the alien hive mind.

Hermann is left alone, free from the doctors’ sympathetic gazes. He doesn’t cry, just stares at the one universal constant that has failed him.

―

There is a meeting called two days later. Ranger Pentecost, the closest thing they have to a new Marshall, leads with Ranger Lambert by his side.

“We can’t afford to keep him around any longer,” Pentecost says. He’s like his father, Hermann thinks, good at keeping his emotions separate from his work.

“Surely there’s some alternative,” one of the doctors who had been working on Newt protested. “He could still be of some use to us.”

A murmur of dissent rippled around the room. Ranger Pentecost’s face fell briefly, and Lambert clapped him on the shoulder.

“Doctor Geiszler has refused to release any more information to us on the Anteverse. Try as we might, he will not break.”

Hermann stiffens at that word, just quick enough that no one in the room notices.

“The longer we keep him around, the sloppier we’re going to get,” Ranger Lambert continues. “That’s a risk we can’t afford to take. He’s not human anymore, and he has no more intel we can use.”

The room is quiet for a blessed second before bursting into sound. Hermann sits in his chair, silent and cold. He is still trying to parse through his sluggish thoughts when one of the new Rangers speaks up.

“Who will do it then?” she asks quietly.

Ranger Pentecost clears his throat. “That’s still being discussed. We will likely send a group of doctors down to―”

“No,” Hermann says, shocking the room into silence. His voice is stronger than he feels. “It has to be me.”

The room holds its breath, waiting for Ranger Pentecost to shoot him down, but the man just sighs wearily and says, “Are you positive, Doctor Gottlieb?”

“He is my partner,” Hermann says. “It has to be me.”

Jake just closes his eyes and nods.

If anyone hears the tremor in Hermann’s voice, they don’t tell him.

―

“Hermann,” the Precursors greet with a Cheshire grin. “Didn’t expect to see you here, buddy.”

The gun in Hermann’s hand feels heavy and cold. The Precursors eye it warily.

“Woah there, pal,” they say. “Don’t want to make any rash decisions here.”

Their grin turns sly. “After all, I doubt you’d want to see Newt’s pretty brain splattered all over the wall.”

Hermann ignores them, instead stooping down to brush his fingers through Newton’s greasy hair. His hip will hurt later, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“It’s okay Newton,” he murmurs, voice low and heavy with tears unshed. For just a brief second, the head under his hand leans into him.

“Hermann, Herms,” the things wearing Newton’s body plead, eyes turning wide and scared. “P-please, don’t, they’ve got me controlled, I can’t―”

But his eyes are still that bright kaiju blue. The act breaks and they laugh, spitting bloody saliva into his face, and he tries to pretend it doesn’t hurt as much as it does.

Instead he keeps running his hands through Newton’s shaggy, unkempt hair, murmuring quiet comforts and promises. He wishes more than anything else that he could release Newton’s hands, those cruel, alien hands, from their binds. He wishes that he could stroke his thumb over the delicate, inked skin of Newton’s wrist and feel a familiar pulse fluttering there.

He can’t. There’s a lot he can’t do.

He stands up, never once taking his hand from Newton’s hair.

“It’s okay Newton,” he says again, ignoring the incessant, cruel babbling of the Precursors. He is reminded suddenly of the stray cat he took care of as a child; his father wouldn’t allow him to have pets, but every morning, he would feed the old brown tabby that lived near the path he took to school, until one day, the cat was nowhere to be found. He had searched all morning until he found the cat on its side a mere few feet from their usual meeting place. Its breaths came heavy and labored, eyes glazed over. He had been lectured when he got home for missing school and broken down into tears, throwing himself into his mother’s arms.

That was the first time he had experienced death.

The second had been his mother’s. He still remembers the bitter anger at his father for making the decision to end his mother’s suffering. He still remembers the heavy weight of wishing he had more time, that maybe something would change.

He understands now.

He stands hunched over in the cell, in front of the man who has always been equal parts infuriating and amazing, bound to a chair, a lifeless husk.

He raises the gun, and his voice begins to tremble.

“It will be okay, Newton,” he says, finally letting his fingers slip out of the other man’s hair.

Newton raises his head slowly, tired and so, so frail, and for a brief second, Hermann can see the green in his eyes as he smiles at him, the crows feet where his eyes crinkle, can see the _sorrow, exhaustion, happiness, relief_ in his eyes.

He pulls the trigger.

The noise is deafening as Newton’s body slumps forward.

All Hermann sees is red the same as Newton’s tattoos.

―

He leaves the PPDC. There are too many memories there for him; too many ghosts that he can’t escape.

He moves far away and takes up one of his many job offers; he _had_ saved the world after all.

The classes he teaches are boring and uneventful; he doesn’t remember any of them. He tries not to remember much of anything these days.

And still, there are days he sees him as vibrantly as if he were there next to him, sleeves rolled up and smeared with kaiju, berating his equations on the board. He holds these ghosts of a memory close to his heart, holding the pieces of himself together as the ghost of the Drift echoes through him with no one else to share it with.

The apparitions become less frequent as time stretches on in its weary pace. He blocks out the pain, blocks out everything that can get past the bitter sternness.

His hair begins to grey and his hip aches with every movement.

He retires and moves into a tiny bungalow near the ocean. He isn’t sure which one of them this love for the sea came from, can’t tell which one of them loved the sound of the waves hitting the shore.

It’s him who feels a piercing melancholy longing watching the green tide come in.

He is sitting on the porch now in the old, uncomfortable rocking chair he had bought, hand outstretched by his side, touching nothing.

Hermann Gottlieb will die as he has lived: alone.

And as he closes his eyes against the mid-autumn sun, against the sight of Newton, not a day older than when they had first met, beautiful and vibrant and green-eyed, he thinks that that might be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to contact me about this work or have requests for others, you can reach me on tumblr at kaifukugawa!


End file.
